By Eva Gregersen
People often ask if it’s possible to change one’s type. The answer to this question is not as straightforward as it would appear.
First, a lot of people are introduced to type by a psychologist or coach who tells them that type is inborn and cannot be changed. This is also what Keirsey believed.[1] In Psychological Types, Jung also appeared to say that type was a result of biological factors, giving the “broad hint” that type was biological. This statement has often been construed as a claim that type was inborn,[2] which is very reasonable as Jung also declared that “ultimately, it must be the individual disposition which decides whether the child will belong to this or that type despite the constancy of external conditions.”[3] Jung allowed that the type could be falsified due to extreme external conditions, but as a rule he appeared to think that type was inborn.
Be that as it may, however, later in life, Jung appeared to change his mind as he unequivocally said that “the type is nothing static” and that “it changes in the course of life.”[4] Likewise, in a private letter, Jung also conceded that both “Freud as well as Adler underwent a change in their personal type.”[5]
So which is it? Does type change?
In our own experience, type changes are very rare, if they happen at all. We have seen a couple of cases where we are open to the possibility that the type may have changed, but nothing where we were absolutely positive. On the other hand, we’ve seen lots of people who claim to have changed type where we (as well as other type professionals in our social circle) were all pretty certain that they hadn’t changed their type at all. So while there are billions of people out there and it would be presumptuous of us to declare that no one ever changed types, we can nevertheless say with certainty that if type changes exist, they are so exceedingly rare that they are practically non-existent. In our opinion, the vast majority of people who claim to have changed types simply haven’t.
If type doesn’t change, then why do people think it does?
There are two factors that are especially prominent in leading people to the belief that their type has changed:
- Superficial knowledge and overreliance on tests. You will often hear people say things along the lines of “when I first took the test, I was ENTP, but now I come out as ENFP, so I’ve changed types.” Such blind faith in tests will often cause people to believe that their type has really changed. In the same vein, the people who take a non-function-based approach to typology are prone to think that they’ve changed types, because they often use typology as a behaviorist system. E.g. “in the past I was always out socializing, but now I’m staying home by myself, so that means I’ve changed from ENFP to INFP,” or “in the past I was very hard-headed and focused on getting my point across, but now I’m more well-rounded and diplomatic, so that means I’ve changed from ENTP to ENFP.” These kinds of approaches no doubt make sense to the people who are espousing them. But what they’re doing is using Jungian concepts to embellish their own private psychological system – what they’re doing is not Jungian typology.
- The interplay of the functions changes throughout the course of life. Once you take a dynamic and function-based approach to Jungian typology, it becomes evident that no one is either a “Thinker” or “Feeler,” but that all of us use all of the four functions. If you are an ENTP, there will be periods in your life where you are more Fe-leaning while at other times you will be more Ti-leaning. But your judgment axis will still be a Ti-Fe axis, not an Fi-Te axis. Nor will your Fe have become “stronger” than your Ti, simply because you are using it more. Such a quantitative approach is Aristotelian in nature, not Jungian. The Jungian approach is qualitative, not quantitative: Tertiary Fe is often halfway unconscious. It has a rakish, puerile charm to it that the auxiliary function does not. The Jungian approach is also dynamic, not fixed, meaning that the tertiary function may be quantitatively stronger than the auxiliary during certain periods in life (and that the auxiliary may be stronger than the dominant in certain periods of life and so on). None of this necessarily means that the type has changed.
Once these considerations are factored in, it becomes clear that the vast majority of people who believe that their type has changed are speaking on a basis of ignorance and/or faulty premises.
“I agree with everything you’ve said so far, but I still think my type has changed.”
When we tell people about the considerations that I have listed above, most of them tend to agree with our reservations. But there is nevertheless a dogged subset of people who maintain that though they’ve never known anyone else who changed types, they certainly have. Here’s why we are skeptical of such claims.
Within the broader field of psychology, psychologists speak of the Fundamental Attribution Error, meaning that we experience our own mental life in much more nuance and detail than we experience the inner lives of others. For example, when you see another person successfully pulling off a difficult feat, you tend to attribute that accomplishment to his fundamental nature. But if you were inside the head of that person, you would be able to experience the full range of nervousness, doubt, challenges, and split-second decisions faced by that person and you would see that the success of his feat was not at all as simple as being merely a question about his “nature.”
Put another way, the Fundamental Attribution Error dictates that you think in terms of properties when analyzing the mental life of others, but think in terms of states when analyzing yourself. For this reason, you are bound to experience yourself in more detail than you experience other people.[6]
It is therefore wise to be skeptical when people assert that it is possible to change types on the basis of the certainty that their type has allegedly changed. As a rule of thumb, their claims would be much more credible if they asserted that their own type had always been stable, but that this other person had changed types. Such claims also exist, of course. But they’re much rarer than the former kind.
NOTES
[1] Keirsey: Please Understand Me II (Prometheus 1998) p. 20
[2] Jung: Psychological Types §405, 558-559
[3] Jung: Psychological Types §560
[4] Jung: C.G. Jung Speaking (Princeton University Press 1977) p. 435
[5] Jung: Letters, vol. 1 (Princeton University Press 1973) p. 301
[6] Though he did not give arguments, Jung was also aware of the fact, stating that “it is often very difficult to find out whether a person belongs to one type or the other, especially in regard to oneself. In respect of one’s own personality one’s judgment is as a rule extraordinarily clouded.” – Jung: Psychological Types §3